Interview with Wil Petty of The Baldwin Bulletin and The Eatonton Messenger

Miya Banks
Aug 31, 2018 · 9 min read
Wil Petty, image via LinkedIn Profile

Thursday morning I had the pleasure of meeting with Wil Petty, who would, within the hour, be on his way from Milledgeville to Eatonton for work. Petty is an editor for not one, but two local publications: The Baldwin Bulletin and The Eatonton Messenger. As a result, he was able to provide interesting answers to my questions, and insight into the world of community journalism.

Background

The first questions I asked Petty were about his background in journalism. I wanted to know whether he had studied journalism in college or gotten involved with it after graduation, and I was curious about where he had studied. He explained that he earned an Associate’s in Journalism from Gainesville State College — a school that, he explained, no longer exists because it merged with the University of North Georgia. Petty went on to earn his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Grady College at University of Georgia.

“While I was there [at UGA], I was one of the editors of the daily newspaper, The Red and Black, and then when I was in Gainesville I was actually their editor in chief of their school paper.” Petty said, explaining some of his early experiences in the field.

After graduation, Petty worked in a small town in North Carolina for a year before transferring to The Lexington Dispatch in the Greensboro area, where he also worked for a year.

“And then I quit, and said I was going to do something else. And after two years, realizing that wasn’t really an option, got onboard with Smith and started as a reporter at Lake Oconee News.” Petty said. He worked at Oconee News for two months before they bought The Baldwin Bulletin, and when that purchase was made, Petty was brought in as an editor. As of July 2018, he was also made an editor of The Eatonton Messenger.

Curious, I asked what he meant when he said there “wasn’t really an option.”

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Lastly, I wanted to know what drew Petty to journalism in the first place.

“It was actually an accident.” He said. Originally, Petty wanted to go into the arts and repertoire division of a record label or other music publishing platform. He was accepted into Belmont College in Ohio, but his parents insisted he needed to stay in Georgia for two years for the sake of free tuition. And so, Petty attended college in Georgia, where no A&R courses were offered, and eventually found himself in a media studies class that required him to work for the student newspaper. Those were the beginnings of his career in journalism.

Career Questions

After discussing his background, I dove into the career-oriented questions.

How do you verify information?
While working as a journalist, Petty made a habit of contacting public officials and using the information they gave him. If he saw inconsistencies, he would call again.

“I would go back and verify . . . if there were some discrepancies between what they said and what it was, I would then call them back and say ‘Is this correct? I’m seeing this, [but] you’re saying this.’”

As an editor, his role is different but he still checks information that looks questionable by calling sources himself to verify, saying that, “there have been a few times where I’ve done that and caught mistakes, so it’s pretty paramount . . .”

What are some red flags?
“I do check our competitors to make sure there’s not plagiarism. I’m pretty key about that because [of] a couple mistakes I’ve seen in the past.”

Image: Waving Red Flag (via https://openclipart.org/)

Petty is also careful about certain crime stories, and said that, this being his first time “as an editor in the real world,” it’s been “a lot of trial by fire.” He went on to explain that being the editor of two community papers is vastly different than working for a large publication like The New York Times, because the stories are, by nature, local. Most people in small communities know each other on a first name basis, and it’s likely they know their officials as well.

“There have been a lot of times where we ran mugshots on the front and that’s the whole reason why people actually picked up the paper, [was] just to see why the person, why their friend, got arrested.” He said. On that note, Petty added that he’s “conscientious about making sure that we’re not ruining lives, because they’re part of this town too.”

Do you still see gatekeeping in Baldwin county, or is that less of a thing these days? As in, deciding what big news should and should not be shared with the public?
“As far as the first part goes, no I’ve never run into that in a small town,” but briefly mentioned that he has seen it in areas with larger publications.

On deciding what to publish and what not to publish, Petty said there is a difference between that process for Eatonton compared to Milledgeville.

“We are the only newspaper in Eatonton,” Petty said of The Eatonton Messenger, and explained that if locals want any news about Eatonton, they would have to get it through The Messenger, because WSB and WMAZ do not cover it. Whereas, in Milledgeville, The Baldwin Bulletin competes with newspapers like The Union-Recorder, making the news selection process different.

“If a daily is writing something about it, and we figure out that they’re not running something but it’s not for a valid reason . . . then we will.” Petty said on competing with Milledgeville’s daily papers.

However, there are some cases where The Baldwin Bulletin serves as a gatekeeper. Petty brought up the story where three kids died at the mud bogging track, and said that, “there were a lot follow-up reports that gave information that the driver was not at fault, and it kind of implied that parents should have been watching their kids a little bit more. We decided not to run that story because we didn’t need to get everybody riled up because we suddenly look like we’re blaming the kids or the parents for a tragedy.”

What are things you learned on the job that your education didn’t prepare you for?
“Well, I did learn that in Georgia, it’s like they drilled it into me that you make one mistake, you’re fired.” Petty said. “That’s not the case. I’ve made a ridiculous amount of mistakes and I’m still here. Corrections go a long way.”

Petty also said that you don’t get comfortable on the job until you’re doing it. “You can study how to interview people all day, but until you’re having to walk up to someone you’ve never met before and be like, ‘hey, tell me about this or what’s going on with that.’” Particularly, he said, addressing city council members with hard questions. “There’s really no training for dealing with those kind of awkward, intense situations.”

Another thing Petty voiced was an observation that a lot of people are talking doom and gloom both in and about the journalism industry. “Like, how . . . newspapers aren’t going to be around in five years, stuff like that.” Petty boldly went on to say, “That’s a complete lie.”

He expounded briefly: “They’re going to stay around. I mean, the Bulletin doubled its subscription rate last year, so there are still people who want to buy newspapers. There are still people who want to read local, community news that they’re not going to get from anybody else.”

Image: Hometown Newspaper (via https://openclipart.org)

Petty believes community news is the future of newspapers, and said the only areas where printed news is being affected are larger areas that cover multiple counties. “Places like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where you have one newspaper covering thirty-something counties in Georgia. At that point, you can’t really sustain that, because [of how things] have changed.” But it wasn’t a doom and gloom proclamation; Petty added the counties covered by larger publications all have local newspapers, so there will still be ways to find the news. It’s just becoming more localized.

What criticisms do you have of the way journalism is taught?
“When it comes to ethics, they teach it as though you’re going to write for a massive paper.” Petty said. “The future of newspapers right now is clearly in community newspapers . . . [and they] are a completely different set of rules. For instance, they will tell you to never ever change anybody’s quote, like, leave it word for word exactly what they said. But if your mayor says ‘they were big’uns’ instead of ‘[they were] big ones,’ go ahead and change it, because [if you don’t,] you’re going to get yelled at for making him look like a redneck. And does it really change the whole point of the story? No.”

Petty went on to say that what students really need to know more about is conducting interviews. “They need to have practicums outside of the college, where you actually go out into the community and . . . interview people outside of [the] confines of your college.”

Final Notes

Near the end of the interview, we came to to the topic of doom and gloom in journalism again, and these were Petty’s continued thoughts:

“It gets aggravating because I’ll hear people say ‘oh, yeah, your job won’t be around in 5 years.’ Uh, really? That’s news to me.”

Petty shared the latest trend in doom and gloom, which was when there was talk of tariffs being imposed on Canada. The trouble being that Canada is where our newsprint paper comes from.

“So basically, the Trump administration had recommended 20 to 25% tariffs on Canadian ground wood, that makes newsprint. Every single newspaper started freaking out. There were people talking about this was going to be the end of newspapers.” Petty said, and explained that some newspapers were letting employees go in anticipation of the tariffs.

After a brief pause, Petty said, “Yesterday, the international trade commission came back with the [original] client, saying there was no sound basis for them [the tariffs], so everybody panicked over nothing.” Publications were preparing for an event that never came to fruition, when they should have waited to see what would happen and reacted accordingly.

Next, Petty mentioned something interesting. “You’ll get your news from television . . . from magazines, all that stuff, but the most important part of newspapers is that if you write a letter to the editor about your congressman, he’s going to see it because he’s in the legal organ, and he has staffers who actually take the paper from every county he represents, and it’s their job to go through and circle every reference to him.” So then, said congressman can see what the community is saying about him, and what issues the citizens are most concerned with.

“Same with governors, same with presidents, same with whoever. With elected officials, newspapers are still by far the most important way to get in direct touch with them. That’s just democracy at work; you write a letter to the editor . . . an opinion about an elected official, something they’re doing wrong, or your stance on an issue. They’re going to know your stance . . . and they’re going to think that that’s the stance of at least 20% of people, because you don’t have a lot of people who actually do that anymore.”

Petty referred to this as “sort of a dead art,” because most people go to Facebook, write their opinions there, and assume the world now knows what they think.

“I don’t think congressmen have time to look at every single constituent’s Facebook to see how they feel. They look in the newspaper.”

Miya Banks

Written by

Senior Mass Comm Major at Georgia College

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